Jon Orsi-Welp

Somewhat naively I ventured into darkness. I turned my mind to unknown arts.
I wanted to do something grand, so I took on the assignment of writing about Mythology in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
I was a bit premature in my assumption that Daedalus begin the main character in the book equates to me having a leisurely time writing this paper.
This is not to say I haven't enjoyed that task, and that I have any regrets, but it does bring about a certain number of important issues.

The first being a recently adopted rule. Never read anything for the first time under any impending deadline or for any restrictive assignment. Approaching a text with an unresearched  preconception leads only to disaster.

also, literature is in many ways is like wine.
It is a delicate art.
It intoxicates.
It can bring people together.
It can bring them apart.
It is too and too great to be reduced to a list of "it"s

My point however is that, any text, like any bottle of wine is not meant to be swallowed whole, nor is any one glass of it meant to be drained in an instant. Instead, each subtle intricacy must come to full fruition and blossom on the palate in moments of savored tantric bliss.
John Nay commented on this in today's performance, invoking Joyce for this perfect palatable passage.
Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder!          


there are shades upon shades of transparent things. 
While reading I have found it unacceptable to bore ahead. 
The goal of reading is not to "finish" a work. It is to read it. 
Robert Pirsig, in his "novel" Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has a really great idea, or mantra- Zen is not on the mountain top, it is in the climb.